Famous Last Words: Artists Famous Last Words: Artists By Chris Raymond Updated September 01, 2016 Whether realized at the time they are said or only in hindsight, nearly everyone will express a word, phrase or sentence that proves the last thing he or she ever says while alive. Sometimes profound, sometimes everyday, here you will find a select collection of the last words spoken by the world's famous artists. Author's note: For the purposes of this article, "artist" is defined as someone who expressed his or her artistic vision through painting or sculpting. Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, 1796-1875, French painter I hope with all my heart there will be painting in heaven. Salvador Dali, 1904-1989, Spanish painter Where is my clock? Dali's final words evoke the image of one of his most famous works, The Persistence of Memory, which featured melting pocket watches. Raphael, 1483-1520, Italian painter and architect Happy. Vincent van Gogh, Dutch painter, 1853-1890 The sadness will last forever.

Controversy surrounds both the troubled artist's last words and the cause of his death. A letter written by his brother, Theo, who was at Van Gogh's side when he died, implies his final words were, "I would like to go like this," which the artist said about 30 minutes before he died. A second letter written by his brother a few days later, however, states that Van Gogh said, "La tristesse durera toujours" [The sadness will last forever] before he died "a few moments later." In addition, a letter written by Van Gogh's friend, Emile Bernard, states that the artist, with "complete lucidity," committed suicide by shooting himself with a revolver on July 27, 1890. The authors of a biography, Van Gogh, A Life, published in 2011, however, postulate that the artist died from an accidental shooting at the hands of two local boys.

Michelangelo, 1475-1564, Italian painter, sculptor and architect I give my soul to God, my body to the earth and my worldly possessions to my nearest of kin, charging them to remember the sufferings of Jesus Christ. Grandma Moses (Anna Marie Robertson Moses), 1860-1961, American painter You take me back to Eagle Bridge and you'll get back your stethoscope. Moses lived in Eagle Bridge, New York, and said these words to her doctor at the healthcare facility where she died, located in Hoosick Falls, New York, roughly 10 kilometers (6 miles) away from her home. Pablo Picasso, 1881-1973, Spanish painter Drink to me, drink to my health, you know I can't drink any more. Joseph M.W. Turner, 1775-1851, English painter The Sun, my dear, the Sun is God.

Turner is known for his skillful use of light/illumination in his works, which earned him the moniker "painter of light." Leonardo da Vinci, 1452-1519, Italian painter, sculptor, musician, architect and inventor I have offended God and mankind because my work did not reach the quality it should have. The final words expressed by da Vinci appear ironic in hindsight given that he painted the Mona Lisa, the world's best known painting and considered a masterpiece. You Might Also Like: David’s Blog – David North Artist David’s Blog David’s Blog My artwork is a journey of discovery and rediscovery, it’s about places I have been to, things I have seen and people I have known throughout my life. I’ll be writing regular articles about my own work, the work of my favourite artists and the things that inspire and motivate both myself and my art. They will appear here, so why not use the link to FOLLOW my blog to be kept up-to-date when a new article is published. David. SUN is GOD - Here is my latest artwork: “Sun is God”, recently completed and exhibited.

J M W Turner is, of course, my lifelong inspiration but this is not a pastiche of anything actually painted by Turner; rather it is my interpretation of a sort of ‘Turneresque’ image expressing his death-bed cry, “The Sun is God”. I add my own obsessions to […] The Sun is God - SUN IS GOD were the last words spoken by the revolutionary British artist Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775 – 1851) at the very moment of his death. It seems unlikely that this was a serious religious outburst but then again we will never know, after a lifetime avoiding churches maybe he was hedging his bets? […] William Turner Biography Self Portrait c. 1799 Turner was born in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, London, England. His father, William Gay Turner (27 January 1738 – 7 August 1829), was a barber and wig maker. His mother, Mary Marshall, became increasingly mentally unstable, perhaps, in part, due to the early death of Turner's younger sister, Helen Turner, in 1786. She died in 1804, after having been committed to a mental asylum in 1799.

Possibly due to the load placed on the family by these problems, the young Turner was sent to stay with his uncle on his mother's side in Brentford in 1785, which was then a small town west of London on the banks of the River Thames. It was here that he first expressed an interest in painting. A year later he went to school in Margate on the north-east Kent coast. By this time he had created many drawings, which his father exhibited in his shop window. He entered the Royal Academy of Art schools in 1789, when he was only 14 years old, and was accepted into the academy a year later. Sir Joshua Reynolds, president of the Royal Academy at the time, chaired the panel that admitted him. At first Turner showed a keen interest in architecture but was advised to keep to painting by the architect Thomas Hardwick (junior). A watercolour of Turner's was accepted for the Summer Exhibition of 1790 after only one year's study. He exhibited his first oil painting in 1796, Fishermen at Sea, and thereafter exhibited at the academy nearly every year for the rest of his life.

her Last Berth to be broken up 1838 39 Although renowned for his oils, Turner is also one of the greatest masters of British watercolour landscape painting. He is commonly known as "the painter of light". One of his most famous oil paintings is The fighting Temeraire tugged to her last berth to be broken up, painted in 1838, which hangs in the National Gallery, London. Turner travelled widely in Europe, starting with France and Switzerland in 1802 and studying in the Louvre in Paris in the same year. He also made many visits to Venice. On a visit to Lyme Regis, in Dorset, England, he painted a stormy scene (now in the Cincinnati Art Museum). Important support for his works also came from Walter Ramsden Fawkes, of Farnley Hall, near Otley in Yorkshire, who became a close friend of the artist. Turner first visited Otley in 1797, aged 22, when commissioned to paint watercolours of the area. He was so attracted to Otley and the surrounding area that he returned time and time again.

The stormy backdrop of Hannibal Crossing The Alps is reputed to have been inspired by a storm over Otley's Chevin while Turner was staying at Farnley Hall. Turner was also a frequent guest of George O'Brien Wyndham, 3rd Earl of Egremont at Petworth House in West Sussex and painted scenes from the grounds of the house and of the Sussex countryside, including a view of the Chichester Canal that Egremont funded. Petworth House still displays a number of paintings. Thunder Storm Approaching As he grew older, Turner became more eccentric. He had few close friends except for his father, who lived with him for thirty years, eventually working as his studio assistant. His father's death in 1829 had a profound effect on him, and thereafter he was subject to bouts of depression. He never married, although he had two daughters by Sarah Danby, one born in 1801, the other in 1811. He died in the house of his mistress Sophia Caroline Booth in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea on 19 December 1851. He is said to have uttered the last words "The sun is God" before expiring.

At his request he was buried in St Paul's Cathedral, where he lies next to Sir Joshua Reynolds. His last exhibition at the Royal Academy was in 1850. The architect Philip Hardwick (1792–1870) who was a friend of Turner's and also the son of the artist's tutor, Thomas Hardwick, was one in charge of his funeral arrangements and wrote to those who knew Turner to tell them at the time of his death that "I must inform you, we have lost him". Style Burning of the Houses of Parliament Turner's talent was recognised early in his life. Financial independence allowed Turner to innovate freely; his mature work is characterised by a chromatic palette and broadly applied atmospheric washes of paint.

According to David Piper's The Illustrated History of Art, his later pictures were called "fantastic puzzles." However, Turner was still recognised as an artistic genius: the influential English art critic John Ruskin described Turner as the artist who could most "stirringly and truthfully measure the moods of Nature." (Piper 321) Suitable vehicles for Turner's imagination were to be found in the subjects of shipwrecks, fires (such as the Burning of Parliament in 1834 , an event which Turner rushed to witness first-hand, and which he transcribed in a series of watercolour sketches), natural catastrophes, and natural phenomena such as sunlight, storm, rain, and fog. He was fascinated by the violent power of the sea, as seen in Dawn after the Wreck (1840) and The Slave Ship (1840) . The Slave Ship 1840 Turner placed human beings in many of his paintings to indicate his affection for humanity on the one hand (note the frequent scenes of people drinking and merry-making or working in the foreground), but its vulnerability and vulgarity amid the 'sublime' nature of the world on the other hand.

'Sublime' here means awe-inspiring, savage grandeur, a natural world unmastered by man, evidence of the power of God - a theme that artists and poets were exploring in this period. The significance of light was to Turner the emanation of God's spirit and this was why he refined the subject matter of his later paintings by leaving out solid objects and detail, concentrating on the play of light on water, the radiance of skies and fires. Although these late paintings appear to be 'impressionistic' and therefore a forerunner of the French school, Turner was striving for expression of spirituality in the world, rather than responding primarily to optical phenomena. His early works, such as Tintern Abbey (1795), stayed true to the traditions of English landscape. However, in Hannibal Crossing the Alps (1812) , an emphasis on the destructive power of nature had already come into play. His distinctive style of painting, in which he used watercolour technique with oil paints, created lightness, fluency, and ephemeral atmospheric effects.

(Piper 321) One popular story about Turner, though it likely has little basis in reality, states that he even had himself "tied to the mast of a ship in order to experience the drama" of the elements during a storm at sea. Great Western Railway 1844 In his later years he used oils ever more transparently, and turned to an evocation of almost pure light by use of shimmering colour. A prime example of his mature style can be seen in Rain, Steam and Speed - The Great Western Railway , where the objects are barely recognizable. The intensity of hue and interest in evanescent light not only placed Turner's work in the vanguard of English painting, but later exerted an influence upon art in France, as well; the Impressionists, particularly Claude Monet, carefully studied his techniques. It has been suggested that the high levels of ash in the atmosphere during the 1816 "Year Without a Summer," which led to unusually spectacular sunsets during this period, were an inspiration for some of Turner's work.

John Ruskin says in his "Notes" on Turner in March 1878, that an early patron, Dr Thomas Monro, the Principal Physician of Bedlam, was a significant influence on Turner's style: His true master was Dr Monro; to the practical teaching of that first patron and the wise simplicity of method of watercolour study, in which he was disciplined by him and companioned by Giston, the healthy and constant development of the greater power is primarily to be attributed; the greatness of the power itself, it is impossible to over-estimate. Staffa, Fingal's Cave The first American to buy a Turner painting was James Lenox of New York City, a private collector. Lenox wished to own a Turner and in 1845 bought one unseen through an intermediary, his friend C. R. Leslie. From among the paintings Turner had on hand and was willing to sell for £500, Leslie selected and shipped the 1832 atmospheric seascape Staffa, Fingal's Cave .

Worried about the painting's reception by Lenox, who knew Turner's work only through his etchings, Leslie wrote Lenox that the quality of Staffa, "a most poetic picture of a steam boat" would become apparent in time. Upon receiving the painting Lenox was baffled, and "greatly disappointed" by what he called the painting's "indistinctness". When Leslie was forced to relay this opinion to Turner, Turner said "You should tell Mr. Lenox that indistinctness is my fault." Staffa, Fingal's Cave is currently owned by the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut. Legacy Turner left a small fortune which he hoped would be used to support what he called "decayed artists". Part of the money went to the Royal Academy of Arts, which does not now use it for this purpose, though occasionally it awards students the Turner Medal. His collection of finished paintings was bequeathed to the British nation, and he intended that a special gallery would be built to house them. This did not come to pass owing to a failure to agree on a site, and then to the parsimony of British governments.

Twenty-two years after his death, the British Parliament passed an Act allowing his paintings to be lent to museums outside London, and so began the process of scattering the pictures which Turner had wanted to be kept together. In 1910 the main part of the Turner Bequest, which includes unfinished paintings and drawings, was rehoused in the Duveen Turner Wing at the Tate Gallery. In 1987 a new wing of the Tate, the Clore Gallery, was opened specifically to house the Turner bequest, though some of the most important paintings in it remain in the National Gallery in contravention of Turner's condition that the finished pictures be kept and shown together. In 1974, the Turner Museum was founded in the USA by Douglass Montrose-Graem to house his collection of Turner prints. A prestigious annual art award, the Turner Prize, created in 1984, was named in Turner's honour, but has become increasingly controversial, having promoted art which has no apparent connection with Turner's. Twenty years later the more modest Winsor & Newton Turner Watercolour Award was founded.

A major exhibition, "Turner's Britain", with material, (including The Fighting Temeraire ) on loan from around the globe, was held at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery from 7 November 2003 to 8 February 2004. In 2005, Turner's The Fighting Temeraire was voted Britain's "greatest painting" in a public poll organised by the BBC. In October 2005 Professor Harold Livermore, its owner for 60 years, gave Sandycombe Lodge, the villa at Twickenham which Turner designed and built for himself, to the Sandycombe Lodge Trust to be preserved as a monument to the artist. In 2006 he additionally gave some land to the Trust which had been part of Turner's domaine. The organisation The Friends of Turner's House was formed in 2004 to support it.

Guidecca from the Canale di Fusina) In April 2006, Christie's New York auctioned Giudecca, La Donna Della Salute and San Giorgio , a view of Venice exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1841, for US$35.8 million, setting a new record for a Turner. The New York Times stated that according to two sources who had requested anonymity the buyer was casino magnate Stephen Wynn. In 2006, Turner's Glaucus and Scylla (1840) was returned by Kimbell Art Museum to the heirs of John and Anna Jaffe after a Holocaust Claim was made. The painting was repurchased by the Kimbell for $5.7 million at a sale by Christie's in April of 2007. (From wikipedia) Fine Artists: Joseph Mallord William Turner English Landscape Painter 1775-1851 Fine Artists: Joseph Mallord William Turner English Landscape Painter 1775-1851 "The Painter of Light", English artist Joseph Mallord William Turner devoted to his entire life to art.

Turner was born in London, England, on April 23, 1775. His father was a barber. His mother died when he was very young. The young Turner received little schooling. His father taught him how to read, but this was the extent of his education except for the study of art. By the age of 13 William Turner was making drawings at home and exhibiting them in his father's shop window for sale. Turner was 15 years old when he received the rare honor of having one of his paintings exhibited at the Royal Academy. By the time he was 18 he had his own studio, and before he was 20 print sellers were eagerly buying his drawings for reproduction. Turner quickly achieved a fine reputation and was elected an associate of the Royal Academy. In 1802, when Joseph Mallord William Turner was only 27, he became a full member. He then began traveling widely in Europe. Turner's style is said to have laid the foundation for Impressionism. Although Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, he is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivaling history painting.

The intensity of hue and interest in evanescent light not only placed Turner's work in the vanguard of English painting, but later exerted an influence upon art in France, as well. The Impressionists, particularly Claude Monet , carefully studied the techniques of JMW Turner. Although known for his oils, Turner is regarded as one of the founders of English watercolor landscape painting. Some of his most famous works are "Calais Pier", "Dido Building Carthage", "Rain, Steam and Speed", "Burial at Sea", and "The Grand Canal, Venice". Venice was the inspiration of some of Turner's finest work. Wherever he visited he studied the effects of sea and sky in every kind of weather. His early training had been as a topographic draftsman. With the years, however, JMW Turner developed a painting technique all his own. Instead of merely recording factually what he saw, Turner translated scenes into a light-filled expression of his own romantic feelings. Turner’s mature work is characterized by a chromatic palette and broadly applied atmospheric washes of paint. According to David Piper's The Illustrated History of Art, his later pictures were called "fantastic puzzles." Turner was often recognized as an artistic genius.

The influential English art critic John Ruskin described Turner as the artist who could most "stirringly and truthfully measure the moods of nature . One of his most famous oil paintings is “The fighting Temeraire tugged to her last berth to be broken up“ (shown here) was painted in 1838. It now hangs in the National Gallery, London. The significance of light was to Turner the emanation of God's spirit and this was why he refined the subject matter of his later paintings by leaving out solid objects and detail, concentrating on the play of light on water, the radiance of skies and fires. Although these late paintings appear to be 'impressionistic' and therefore a forerunner of the French school, Turner was striving for expression of spirituality in the world, rather than responding primarily to optical phenomena. JMW Turner travelled widely in Europe, starting with France and Switzerland in 1802 and studying in the Louvre in Paris in the same year. On a visit to Lyme Regis, in Dorset, England, he painted "A Stormy Scene" which is now displayed in the Cincinnati Art Museum.

An important supporter of Turner's work was Walter Fawkes, of Farnley Hall, in Otley, who became a close friend of the artist. Turner first visited Otley in 1797, aged 22, when commissioned to paint watercolors of the area. He was so attracted to Otley and the surrounding area that he returned time and time again. The stormy backdrop of "Hannibal Crossing The Alps" (shown here) is reputed to have been inspired by a storm over Otley's Chevin while Turner was staying at Farnley Hall. In Hannibal Crossing the Alps (1812), an emphasis on the destructive power of nature had already come into play. His distinctive style of painting, in which he used watercolor technique with oil paints, created lightness, fluency, and ephemeral atmospheric effects. Turner was also a frequent guest of George O'Brien Wyndham, 3rd Earl of Egremont in West Sussex and painted scenes from the grounds of the house and of the Sussex countryside, including "A view of the Chichester Canal "that Egremont funded. Petworth House still displays a number of paintings by Turner.

As he grew older, Turner became more eccentric. He had few close friends except for his father, who lived with him for thirty years, eventually working as his studio assistant. His father's death in 1829 had a profound effect on him, and thereafter he was subject to bouts of depression. He never married, although he had two daughters by Sarah Danby, one born in 1801, the other in 1811. He allowed no one to watch him while he painted. He gave up attending the meetings of the academy. None of his acquaintances saw him for months at a time. Turner continued to travel but always alone. He still held exhibitions, but he usually refused to sell his paintings. When he was persuaded to sell one, JMW Turner was dejected for days. JMW Turner died in the house of his mistress Sophia Caroline Booth in Chelsea on December 19, 1851. JMW Turner is said to have uttered the last words "The sun is God" before dying. At his request he was buried in St Paul's Cathedral, where he lies next to Sir Joshua Reynolds. His last exhibition at the Royal Academy was in 1850.

Turner left a large fortune that he hoped would be used to support what he called "decaying artists." His collection of paintings was bequeathed to his country. At his request he was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral. At Michael Arnold Art we offer a complete online art experience © Michael Arnold Art . All rights reserved JWM Turner - Master Paintings 19th Century - YouTube JWM Turner - Master Paintings 19th Century Want to watch this again later? Sign in to add this video to a playlist. Need to report the video? Sign in to report inappropriate content. Rating is available when the video has been rented. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later. Published on Mar 9, 2013 'Joseph Mallord William "J. M. W." Turner, RA (23 April 1775 -- 19 December 1851) was a British Romantic landscape painter, water-colourist, and printmaker. Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, but is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivalling history painting.

Although renowned for his oil paintings, Turner is also one of the greatest masters of British watercolour landscape painting. He is commonly known as "the painter of light" and his work is regarded as a Romantic preface to Impressionism.' 'Turner died in the house of his mistress Sophia Caroline Booth in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea on 19 December 1851. He is said to have uttered the last words "The sun is God" before expiring. At his request he was buried in St Paul's Cathedral, where he lies next to Sir Joshua Reynolds. His last exhibition at the Royal Academy was in 1850.' ~ Wikipedia The Sun is God | Tate The Sun is God Tate Etc.

issue 2: Autumn 2004 Joseph Mallord William Turner Light and Colour (Goethe's Theory) - the Morning after the Deluge - Moses Writing the Book of Genesis exhibited 1843 Oil on canvas support: 787 x 787 mm frame: 1036 x 1036 x 115 mm Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856 New York-based video artist Paul Pfeiffer explains how J.M.W. Turner’s painting Light and Colour (Goethe’s Theory) – The Morning after the Deluge provided new insights into the shifting nature of visual perception, in which the familiar features of traditional landscape painting – horizon line, single-point perspective, the illusion of depth, the scenery itself – dissolve into a painterly mist. Such insights have informed Pfeiffer’s own work I came to J.M.W. Turner ’s Light and Colour (Goethe’s Theory) – the Morning after the Deluge – Moses Writing the Book of Genesis 1843 after reading Jonathan Crary’s book Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century.

Crary writes about the visual culture of the Victorian era and the industrial revolution, showing how innovations in different fields gave rise to new insights about the nature of vision. Nowhere is this clearer than in the evolution of Turner’s painting practice. Not only did he master the techniques of his genre, he went on to challenge and reformulate some of its most basic principles. In his late works, in particular, the familiar features of traditional landscape painting – horizon line, single-point perspective, the illusion of depth, the scenery itself – dissolve into a painterly mist, while the perceptual effects of light and colour emerge as objects of contemplation in their own right. In the title of this painting, Turner references the optical experiments of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, whose writings include a study of after-images, the coloured spots produced in the eye by staring directly at the sun. For Goethe, after-images were proof that the eye was not simply a passive receiver of light rays, as common logic of the time had it. There were subtle eccentricities to the sense of sight; the eye was even capable of generating its own internal lighting and colour effects.

Light and Colour (Goethe’s Theory), painted at the end of the artist’s career, is a startling visual counterpart to Goethe’s theories. As Crary describes it, the ‘view of the sun that had dominated so many of Turner’s previous images now becomes a fusion of eye and sun. Through the after-image the sun is made to belong to the body, and the body in fact takes over as the source of its effects.’ The painting represents a significant shift from an understanding of reality as being ‘out there’ to something formed by the viewer. Paul Pfeiffer Goethe’s Message to the New Negroes #1, #2 and #3 2002 Digital video loop, cast LCD monitor, DVD player and metal armature 14 x 16.5 x 91.4 cm Courtesy Thomas Dane © Paul Pfeiffer You assume that in a sunset picture what you have is the sun moving towards a stable horizon. In the same way that the focus of the gaze in Turner’s painting is no longer a single-point perspective, I wanted to invert that idea in my Morning After The Deluge 2003, making the sun the stable element and the horizon the unstable one.

In fact, Turner actually takes the horizon out of the picture, dispensing with the usual reference point thought to be fundamental in structuring a landscape painting. I’m attracted to source material that is already quite loaded, although I’m not referring to religious painting per se, but more to the perception of religious history and art history as some kind of evolving perceptual consciousness. In religious paintings the centre of the image is often the most important part. Crary talks about Turner’s sun pictures as self-portraits, and my video Vitruvian Figure – After Pavia Cathedral 1998 is, in a way, a kind of figure study. At the same time I always have this strange feeling that I’m not actually taking up the centre of the picture, or that something else is there as well. Turner’s painting is a significant art historical marker. He has taken a simple subject – the sun – and given it a sense of timelessness and universality. I shot Morning After The Deluge in real time. I was interested in the idea that the video loop represents a disturbing notion of time being something that you can actually freeze. When you look at the image you don’t see anything happening. The sun and the horizon don’t seem to move.

You might think it’s a still unless you happen to look at it at a moment when a bird is flying by. You could call this piece romantic. It’s really quite saturated. It has a very dramatic composition, but it pulls the ground out from under the viewer, creating an optical space for him or her to stand in. Paul Pfeiffer Digital video loop, cast LCD monitor, DVD 14 x 16.5 x 91.4 cm Courtesy Thomas Dane © Paul Pfeiffer My starting point for this piece is very personal and reflects my interest in identity in relation to picture making. It has much to do with very early experiences of dislocation and a feeling that, visually, things often don’t make sense. For example, during an early period of my life I was living in the Philippines where my parents were teachers. It was a real pocket of American culture in a very small, rural, tropical environment. We got more than our fair share of American pop culture coming through the television and movies. It felt like a kind of displacement, growing up imbibing American images at one remove.

With digital media there is a return to this type of disembodied relation, in terms of a classical understanding of the body – to the kind of vision which is so physically mediated that, for me, it becomes unclear where the boundary between the human body and the machine begins. Paul Pfeiffer J.M.W. TURNER: 'The Harbour of Dieppe' (c.1826) at The Frick Collection, NYC J.M.W. TURNER: 'The Harbour of Dieppe' (c.1826) at The Frick Collection, NYC "The harbour of Dieppe" (c. 1826) By Joseph Mallord William Turner, from Covent Garden, London, England (1775 - 1851) - oil on canvas; 173.7 x 225.4 cm; 68.4 x 88.7 in - © The Frick Collection, New York Bought from Mrs. Naylor, together with Cologne, by Agnew and Sulley, through Dyer and Sons, for a total of £42,000. Knoedler.

Frick, 1914 Visually Audacious A compulsive experimenter, Turner was a thorny devil; a painter whose work ranks among the most visually audacious that any British artist has ever produced and yet, across the age groups, across the social divides, he is still the country’s most celebrated and indeed most cherished artist. We love him because he challenges us, dares us even, to keep looking; and the more he does so, the more we look; and the more we look, the more deeply we fall in love. And then of course there is the sheer volume of his output. In scope and in scale he managed to churn out a seemingly endless stream of dazzlingly beautiful paintings, treating an equally dazzling range of subjects: battle scenes, shipwrecks, avalanches and snow storms. This, though, is quieter, more subdued, which is partly what draws me to it. In many ways, the story it tells is less about a place, the Harbour of Dieppe, than it is about Turner’s increasing fascination with the dramatic effects of sunlight.

The Harbour of Dieppe Turner completed the painting in 1826, a year after exhibiting it in the Royal Academy, along with its companion piece 'Cologne: The Arrival of a Packet Boat: Evening', (Fig. 5) the one set at dawn, the other at dusk. As with most of his paintings, the composition was drawn from sketches made in situ, these dating back to his 1821 trip to France. Dieppe Harbour (on the coast of Northern France) at the beginning of the nineteenth century was a bustling commercial hub. Turner delights in capturing the throng, populating the waterfront with crowds of people going about their daily business, some industrious, others less so. To the right, a sluice flows into the sea through an outlet on the harbour's wall reminding us of the polluting effects of the crowd’s activities, a point intensified by the numerous empty bottles of alcohol littered on the harbour’s edge.

That Marvellous Sun These references to the mundane and the sordid are not, however, what first strikes us about the painting, rather it is that marvellous sun, creating a great ball of light in the sky which spreads out like a sheet of gold across the surface of the water. Art historians argue that Turner’s fascination with light during this period was inspired by a visit to Italy he made in 1819. Turner’s contemporaries noted this as well. Some in fact criticized him for transposing a Mediterranean light onto a Northern European setting, a criticism that reveals a tendency to idealize the Italian countryside as some kind of pastoral idyll in contrast to the more industrialized landscape of the north. Turner himself was probably sympathetic to this view and the painting can be read as a Romantic response to the expansion of international commerce that followed the Napoleonic wars. While the water facilitates trade, allowing the free flow of capital, the gloriously sublime quality of the sun serves to remind us that we are not the ones in control.

The light overwhelms us, short-circuits our powers of visual deduction so that we are constantly distracted from the bevy of everyday activity that it is actually taking place and are forced to experience the scene in an emotional and very personal way. Turner and Claude In its composition, Turner draws heavily on the work of the seventeenth century French painter Claude Lorrain, an influence that was not lost on some of the more sympathetic contemporary reviewers: “Not even Claude in his happiest efforts, has exceeded the brilliant composition before us,” wrote one. As in Claude’s 'Port Scene with the Villa Medici,' (Fig. 7) a painting Turner makes reference to frequently in his paintings, the shadows cast by the boats to the right in The Harbour of Dieppe act to draw the viewer's eye into the painting, a technique known as repoussoir. Like the Claude, the diminishing scale of the sails adds to the illusion of depth. And as with Claude’s treatment of the villa, Turner has carefully worked out architectural features such as the steps at the harbour's edge and the row of houses on the right of the canvas. These create tidy orthogonals that guide us into the painting and enhance the illusion of space.

Another Claudian device is the use of light to create aerial perspective, in which under the glare of the sun, objects in the distance lose their local colour and merge into a pale bluish grey. This is particularly noticeable in the treatment of the church tower at Dieppe whose soft, hazy outline juxtaposes the harshness of that of the sail in the foreground to the left. This too serves to take us away, to transport us from the seedy details of life in a nineteenth century port town to something that touches the divine. Light Reigns Supreme Again and again then we come back to light, the single unifying feature that both inspires and shapes the composition. Some of Turner’s contemporary commentators took exception to this and what they took to be Turner’s excessive use of yellow, one even joking that he must have contracted yellow fever. Not one to be put off so easily, though, over the coming years he continued to experiment with dramatic light effects in his large-scale landscapes. In 'Regulus 'of 1828 and reworked in 1837 (Fig. 6), for instance, the use of yellow has become almost blinding, shattering the horizon and carving out a singular, shimmering vertical axis into the composition.

This elemental collision in which light reigns supreme becomes an increasingly important motif in Turner’s later works and whether or not his last words were indeed, as legend has it, “The sun is God”, it hardly seems to matter, for in summing up Turner, no other words would seem to do. "The Harbour of Dieppe" (c. 1826) By Joseph Mallord William Turner, from Covent Garden, London, England (1775 - 1851) - oil on canvas; 173.7 x 225.4 cm; 68.4 x 88.7 in - © The Frick Collection, New York Bought from Mrs. Naylor, together with Cologne, by Agnew and Sulley, through Dyer and Sons, for a total of £42,000. Knoedler. Frick, 1914. "The Harbour of Dieppe" (c.

1826) [Detail] By Joseph Mallord William Turner, from Covent Garden, London, England (1775 - 1851) - oil on canvas; 173.7 x 225.4 cm; 68.4 x 88.7 in - © The Frick Collection, New York "The Harbour of Dieppe" (c. 1826) [Detail] By Joseph Mallord William Turner, from Covent Garden, London, England (1775 - 1851) - oil on canvas; 173.7 x 225.4 cm; 68.4 x 88.7 in - © The Frick Collection, New York "The Harbour of Dieppe" (c. 1826) [Detail] By Joseph Mallord William Turner, from Covent Garden, London, England (1775 - 1851) - oil on canvas; 173.7 x 225.4 cm; 68.4 x 88.7 in - © The Frick Collection, New York Fig.

5 "Cologne, the arrival of a packet boat, evening" (exhibited 1826) By Joseph Mallord William Turner, from Covent Garden, London, England (1775 - 1851) - oil on canvas; 168.6 x 224.1 cm - © The Frick Collection, New York Purchased, 1914 © Turner Worldwide Fig. 6 "Regulus" (1828, reworked 1837) By Joseph Mallord William Turner, from Covent Garden, London, England (1775 - 1851) - oil on canvas; 89.5 x 123.8 cm - © Tate Britain, London, UK Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856 Fig.

7 "Port Scene with the Villa Medici" (1637) By Claude Lorrain (Claude Gellée), from Chamagne, France (1604 - 1682) - oil on canvas; 102 x 133 cm; 40.2 x 52.4 in - © Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy May 18, 2014 at 2:05am · Public

Question: Which artist's last words, in 1851, were "The sun is God"?
Answer: J M W TURNER